517 - Morgaine and Mordred's forces attack Camelot. Jason Blood betrays the city, and Morgan in turn betrays him, beginning to open Etrigan's hellfonts to consume the city. Merlin forges the 2nd Shadowpact to cut Morgan off from her power. She and Mordred are trapped within the Paths Beyond.

1943 - Morgaine breaks free of the Paths Beyond during the 3rd Shadowpact, but has lost all her power

35 years ago - Morgaine discovers a magical source to regain her youth and power. She is stopped from freeing Mordred from the Paths Beyond by Jason Blood & Zatara.

22 years ago - Morgaine opens the Paths Beyond to free Mordred. She is stopped by Sir Justin, who chooses to adventure within and close them behind him.

7 years ago - Morgaine draws power during the Godwar. She battles Janissary for possession of the Eternity Book.

2 years ago - Morgaine steals an artifact from Themyscera and frees Mordred from the Paths Beyond. They are only stopped by the combined strength of the Justice League.

It's worth noting that Arthurian legend extends over hundreds of years and that entire fields of study go into the reading and translating of it. Early versions of Morgan Le Fay depicted her as a powerful sorceress or fay creature, but the idea that was in any way malicious came much later in the evolution of these stories. The slow metamorphasis of Morgan into a villain is actually a topic of vast literary importance, because it functions as an indicator of English societies villification of 'pagan' religions in favor of christianity.

This is just in my own casual reading, obviously... Arthurian scholars have written at length about these stories for decades. It's one of my favorite fields of academia.

In the meantime... Morgaine Le Fay is actually a weirdly important character in DC's story, even though she comes from an entirely different literary tradition.

Morgaine Le Fay's Comic History

Because Morgaine is actually a character from Authorian legend she is inexorably tied to any modern fictional world that dips it's toes into those legends. In the early history of DC comics characters made several time-traveling trips back to Arthurian England, and once it was established that those characters were a part of the DC universe, it was inevitable that the 'villain' of most traditional takes on Arthurian legend would become a part of DC as well.

The character as she is commonly depicted first appeared in 1972 in Jack Kirby's The Demon. This was where the use of the alternative name 'Morgaine' rather than 'Morgan' became the standard for DC's interpretation of the character. Kirby has a real knack for crafting freestanding stories right in the midst of a larger comic landscape, and Morgaine actually fit really well into that. Other characters with Arthurian ties have cropped up across the DC landscape, and invariably Morgaine has been connected to them.

So while there is rarely a central comic narrative that is tied to her, she continues to be a driving part of the backstories of many classic DC characters.

Our Morgaine Le Fay Story

Like several other long standing background characters, building our timeline meant that we would need to provide a more concrete structure to things that are traditionally just considered nebulous backstory. We needed to actually lay out the events of Arthurian legend within our timeline and all the ways they tied into our larger story. Many later stories make Morgaine Arthur's sister, but if we're going to make Mordred their child then we can probably just leave that part out. We took from a few different places to build her story... whether from my limited understanding of actual Arthurian legend, or from John Boorman's movie Excalibur (where Morgan was played by a young Helen Mirren). I'm a fan of J. Robert King's Le Morte De'Avalon, but I'm sure there's a little bit of Marion Bradley's Mists of Avalon in there.

Of course, this is a comic timeline. Before we did anything else, the various characters whose stories needed Morgaine needed to be laid out. Jason Blood and Sir Jason's stories all required her to be a particular type of baddie, and so we had to start from that. Any similarity, form that point on, to any of the traditonal verisons of the character, is the result of much better writers than me.

Morgaine Le Fay's Costume

Morgaine Le Fay is obviously a public domain character, so she has cropped up all over comics in a wide variety of stories and has been interpretted by all sorts of artists.

The character's most lasting appearance when it comes to DC comics is the long dress with the elaborate metallic face mask as created by Jack Kirby in her first appearances in the Demon. this is the look that carried over into the animated Justice League series, and by all accounts seems to work pretty well. For all intents and purposes, this should probably be the one we go with.

I do just want to make a quick mention of a bit of a double standard in comics. They tend to draw women in a very sexualized manner; not only is this done both deliberately (attracting a teenage boy readership) but it's often also done because the dudes drawing these comics have sometimes not been the most mature people in the world. The double standard I'm talking about, though, is how female villains seem to be the only CHARACTERS that do it deliberately. With only a few exceptions, scantily clad heroines seem to be oblivious to how they are dressed, while villanesses are gleefully putting themselves and their weaponized sexuality on display. It's so common it's actually a bit of a trope, and one of my all time favorite examples of this is in one of my favorite comic book "maxi-series", Brian Bollard's Camelot 3000. It depicted Arthur and his knights awakening to defend Earth in the future. Morgan wore, completely unironically, a beaded bikini and cape. It's something right out of Ming the Merciless, and while it's so outlandish it's almost laughable, it's also a classic representation of this long-standing comic trope.

Morgan Le Fay's Future

While Morgaine's past is tied to many classic heroes stories, her future is actually full of all sorts of possibility.

Her return in modern times because of the various Shadowpact spells that have been cast in the last century sets her up beautifully as a recurring villain for several major stories. We've depicted her fighting the Shining Knight and Jannissary since both characters have ties to Camelot and Merlin, but we've also had her battle the All-Star Squadron and the Justice League. She's certainly powerful enough to present a threat that requires entire teams to gather to fight her.

We've ended her timeline with her finally freeing her son Mordred before they are defeated, but then what comes next? I mentioned the series Camelot 3000 above, and I adore the notion of Morgaine and Mordred actually turning their intentions outward into space. Comics are one of the only places where you can see a sorceress from classic literature turned into an intergalactic warlord.